Factorio Fixed My Broken Brain

[@ArchitectofGames]

Pals I need more iron gears please give me just one iron gear surely using your generous donation to build a belt will be enough to finish my factory that makes even more iron gears please help me: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames Did you hear? Social media is fixed forever now! Only nice people are allowed on bluesky and if you're found to have ever said anything mean they will throw you to a pack of wild dogs, I've never been happier!: bsky.app/profile/architectofgames.bsky.social

[@Khaim.m]

Dyson Sphere Program is _not_ from 2016. Google says 2021.

[@ej7052]

⚙️

[@Thalassicus01]

Iron gears? Have you BEEN to Fulgora? 😂

[@ClowdyHowdy]

Best I can do is 130k iron gears.

[@Sh1penfire]

B a C t E r I a

[@Nexowl]

Oh no guys I think we lost him to Cracktorio.

[@oriongabriel6966]

With the new DLC I'd much rather call the game "black-tar herointorio" ngl

[@GmodPlusWoW]

I know that feeling with Slay the Spire and Balatro. I'm not gonna touch Cracktorio with a barge pole; not because I don't think I'd enjoy it, but because it'd eat up a lot of time that I should rightly spend on playing other games. ...okay, that includes still Slay the Spire and Balatro and Peglin (I have a love-hate relationship with the latter), but it also includes stuff like Strange Horticulture, Fear the Spotlight and the recently-released MiSide. ...speaking of Slay the Spire, it's definitely a high watermark for roguelikes and roguelites, but part of me wishes there was just a little bit more (I guess that's what mods and the sequel are for). And I also wish that more games in that vein had stage progression that isn't the traditional "following nodes connected by paths" model. If anything, I'd prefer a model that was more in line with how FTL did it, where you jump between nodes that are within travelling distance, and you're free to move on whenever you choose to, but there's an advancing wall of doom that makes it dangerous to bum around in a sector for TOO long. That way, you have more freedom about what path and opportunities your journey affords you, and you're able to lean further into juicy risk-reward by squeezing in a few more nodes before you absolutely have to move on.

[@Nexowl]

I never played Factorio tbh but know a low about it. But after my insane two weeks of Satisfactory I know how fun but also consuming this kind of games are.

[@Coffeepanda294]

Thanks for letting me know to stay away from Factorio. I've got enough with the brutally unforgiving skinner box that is Noita. Start a run, die (often very early), start a new run, partly out of sheer frustration and partly because you think _this one_ might be one of those runs where you get some awesome items, spells, or fungal shifts.

[@Vadymaus]

I think Factorio is more time-optimized than roguelikes. I often played Factorio for just an hour and felt like I had accomplished a lot. Sure, you can spend a lot of time optimizing one small production chain, but if you decide to do that, it means it was an interesting task for you. On the other hand, roguelikes take a long time and you end up dead and have to restart. I didn't mean that roguelikes are unfun or bad (I play them a lot), but they do have a boring side too. I don't like when people do bad advertising for Factorio. Calling it a drug or an addiction. Trust me, if you play games regularly, even if not too much in one day, you will still waste thousands of hours on boring games, so why don't you try Factorio.

[@Trupen]

you must play Factorio you must play Factorio you must play Factorio you must play Factorio

[@theirishviking9278]

"I did my time... SIX YEAR OF IT... IN FACTORIO"

[@Zaspar]

Best game

[@kneitolas5467]

Trupen!

[@MSpotatoes]

Tell us, is Gleba in the room with us right now?

[@TaliZorahVasectory]

My boy over here talking about how 100 hours is a lot of Factorio time

[@Khaim.m]

Gotta start somewhere.

[@Krigalishnikov]

I "lost" 189 hours in 12 days after the DLC dropped, that's after several thousand on the base game, I never recommend this game to anyone, I don't even comment that I play it out of shame.

[@qyeti4785]

@@Krigalishnikov 16 hours a day is devious

[@Krigalishnikov]

@@qyeti4785 one of the sittings was 32 hours actually, I have no idea how my brain was still working on the end and like I said, am very ashamed of it but it felt like just a couple of days, you know how factorio time dilation works. Thankfully I'm free from it and haven't played since "finishing" that playthrough, but I admit I'm fighting constantly the urge to open the game.

[@sa3doz]

As a youtuber that needs to make videos and play games to analyse them for said videos i thing 20 hours are a waste for him But for me and people who just play games for the sake of playing games and having fun because we have alot of time on our hands its not a waste at all

[@hannahrose7981]

the factory must grow

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

I just finished my first space age run and now Im just tempted to let the factory run till it idles because all of its buffers fill up and then see all the polution go away once my job is done...

[@HL65536]

On spaceships, the factory must shrink! Can you delete one more tile by doing even more cursed spaghetti? That'll optimize your ship to be 0.01km/s faster!

[@submachinegun5737]

@@HL65536Now growing doesn’t just mean bigger, it means faster. Make everything legendary! Research more asteroid productivity to make the platform spew out even more resources. Megabasing never caught my attention in the base game since it was just spam optimized blueprints over the world, but now you need to resolve all of the planets problems at a huge scale, super excited to get my run to that level of production

[@Cz_Dani]

Yes brother

[@dansamarco1610]

the factory must grow

[@subzeroab0]

The optimalzation of factorio is to play more factorio. Factorio is a perfect feedback loop where every problem solved causes more problems to be solved. If you want to make more green circuits, you'll need more iron and copper. To get more iron and copper, you have to expand to new ore patches. This requires you to fight against the biters and claim the area. Now you need to set up trains to deliver the ore back to the base. Well all the new drills you placed requires more power. So you expand the power production, and you need more coal. Every problem requires many different things to be resolved. It's never just one quick fix but a whole cascade of smaller issues. But the feedback loop gives positive reinforcement because you get rewarded for your efforts and encouraged to continue onwards towards your goal.

[@jaysheddan1162]

Factorio's biggest strength in my opinion is that your previous work is never invalidated by new unlocks or new designs you've come up with; your old crappy red science setup can chug along for another 40 hours of gametime just fine and you can always build another red science production area elsewhere and have it plug into the old system perfectly. As for optimization, there's an interesting tug of war happening in the player's mind between micro and macro optimization and each approach is a perfectly valid use of your time: - Prioritize creating efficient and perfect designs rather than hacks, then you can copy-paste the design each time you need it without thinking (Where janky solutions require additional routing each time you place them) - Prioritize scaling your resource production regardless of efficiency or actual resource needs, since you'll need the resources at some point anyway. - Prioritize progression speed over efficiency or scalability, since the new unlocks can be huge upgrades. Each style is useful and feels like a meaningful use of your time, which is of course, very fun.

[@defenestrated23]

​@@jaysheddan1162I'm still feeding my second iteration bootstrap red and green science factory with requestor chests even though I have a massive main bus and interplanetary logistics cause it's not remotely the bottleneck

[@4thstateofmatter662]

@@jaysheddan1162 there is a couple instances of new buildings invalidating old ones in space age kind of, since foundries (ESPECIALLY foundries), big drills, and EM plants are incredible and absolutely worth restructuring to support them If only gleba's biochambers were more applicable to general situations other than oil cracking... if they could use all the other normal chem plant recipes, that would be nice

[@jaysheddan1162]

@@4thstateofmatter662 Foundries are really cool because they require different logistics to get the same output, since you need calcite rather than coal, you could just import from vulcanus or make a stationary calcite factory or even a mobile calcite 'scoop'. EM plants, cryo plants and big drills do kinda feel like power-creep but they do take up more space so you have to put some thought into refitting your factories. I'm with you on biochambers, but I think instead of being the chem plant replacement they just need a couple more unique and super useful recipes that make the logistical challenge worth your time, maybe a few wood-based recipes?

[@dynamiczero]

Been recently replaying The Witcher 3 and I love that potions aren't finite. As long as you have alcohol, you automatically replenish all your potions when you meditate (rest), so you aren't trying to save them up. Instead, you are incentivized to use them all the time, which directly ties to the dynamic of being a Witcher and planning out your oil and potion setup for combat

[@LimeyLassen]

The Estus Flask from Souls games is the more obvious example

[@wygiwyg]

Yeah but Witcher has concoctions and they were rare enough that I never used them

[@Noric.Morava]

And since it’s fantasy Poland, there is more alcohol lying around than anything else, god bless.

[@Pyritie]

instead, you just hoard alcohol, because "what if I can't find any later?"

[@Santi.Ocampos]

​@@Pyritie no, hoarding in this case is more of a loot goblin situation due to being able to find refill alcohol even inside crates in the middle of a bog. Food and bottles of water were also in every place you could imagine and by midgame you had plenty of those

[@Ashtarte3D]

Playing Satisfactory music over footage of Factorio is top tier trolling and I adore it.

[@fearghallthomas4808]

Wow! As someone who has been working on factorio for the expansion, I am truly fanboying out! Seeing someone who's content I love talking about work I have done is so surreal! Thanks for the great video, i hope you are getting enough food, water and sleep as you grow your factory ❤

[@Mollwa]

Thank you for your time o7... unless your grubby paws had a hand in Gleba.😁

[@MrAbgeBrandt]

Lol, for me, Gleba is the single best part of Space Age!

[@Sputnik34]

Thank you for the shout-out! I downloaded the demo for Factorio literally yesterday. It's on my to do list :')

[@Jan12700]

Then Factorio will be your to-do list, your only thing to do for the next year. Say goodbye to everyone you love, you will not see them again for this time.

[@Sputnik34]

@@Jan12700 hahaha i always take January off of video production so sounds like January is the perfect time to get absorbed :')

[@FulloutPostal]

@@Sputnik34 I'm not very good at factorio, I haven't touched the expansion... yet my playtime is at 1.1k hours...

[@Sputnik34]

@@FulloutPostal holy FUCK

[@CanuckMonkey13]

Factorio has a DEMO?!? Found it, downloading now. Should tide me over until I have a job again and can buy the full game....

[@FraldariAce]

For some reason, I don't even use these items in the endgame fight because "what if items carry over in ng+ and I need them THEN??"

[@gabemerritt3139]

Or what if the boss has a phase 2, or this is the only real challenge the game has thrown at you yet, so you have to beat it for real, with no help.

[@matheusjahnke8643]

The -hero- player is overpowered but overly cautious.

[@chrischeng9145]

Ahhh noita?

[@AxelKaenryuu]

To add to this topic: There`s also something special when you get to optimize a game by yourself, not by any guides. It`s the type of "I understand it now" feeling that makes feel pride for recognizing "THE BEST PATH". But at the same time, if you ever find out that the optimization you discovered by yourself is far away from the best one, it hurts the pride you felt before. Because of this i usually shy away from any guides, except when discussing strategies with friends, even if it eventually makes me fall behind others.

[@TheAlison1456]

also related, the disgusting "metagaming" problem. in my opinion it's the biggest issue with PvPs in general, including MOBAs.

[@mystokes]

Feeling exactly that way about path of exile 2 now. I've played for a week without looking at other people's builds and had a great time putting together my own character. Now I've looked at how people are doing similar strategies but better and lost all motivation to keep playing

[@solsystem1342]

Idk, it depends. There are definitely games where I've improved on my own over time and then, as I felt I was capping out, I looked externally for advice and realized I was playing suboptimally then, I took that knowlege back and pushed further. It can be a fun loop too you just need to accept that you're probably not the best at the game while still focusing on why something works so you don't fall into pitfalls in applying general rules to edge cases. Idk sometimes i definetly intentionally avoid outside sources though. Like in chess. 200-300 elo chess is so exciting but I don't actually care about the game enough to try and refine my play 😅

[@Thalassicus01]

This is exactly why I avoid downloading blueprints for Factorio. I've only done it for one thing, S/R memory latches, because I always forget how they work.

[@Brian-tn4cd]

While recently I've been into doing this, it hurts your pride less when when you look up more optimal strategies from others, you get the story of how they get there, it helps the pride when you find out that they had similar thought processes to you and/or you can appreciate more how that setup/action is more optimal by having that story to tell/know and in some ways it can make it more memorable too

[@kalzekdor]

22:37 Just get your friends to play Factorio with you. The real friendship is the factory we made along the way.

[@Jan12700]

And the millions of biters that were killed

[@justinsinke2088]

I'm honestly baffled that the pistol in Doom 2016 was apparently an issue. I stopped using it as soon as I had a "real" weapon and I don't think I ever used it again except for maybe a time or two at the end of a fight when there was just an imp or two left to clean up and I could save a little ammo by using my weakest weapon to take out the weakest foe. The idea of trying to use it for most of the game outside of a self imposed challenge run feels strange to me.

[@obsidianflight8065]

Honestly I understand what he meant exactly Not because I did this in doom, I haven't gotten to play doom yet But in Enter the Gungeon, I exclusively used my starter pistol until I reached the bosses. My friend kept telling me to stop and at some point I did actually listen and then won my first game before he ever did, which was funny. Eventually I got a relic that made my bullets follow my cursor, so my starter pistol became a good weapon because the reason it was bad was because you can't aim with it.

[@daniellemurnett2534]

That said with how Doom Eternal's ammo is balanced having it would definitely have caused issues. It's way more stingy with max ammo reserves so you're out of ammo more often so there's more of a psychological incentive to use The One That Doesn't Run Out

[@Zoomeep]

@daniellemurnett2534 For me it was the exact other way around. The whole "DOOM Eternal forces you to play like a badass"-thing completely failed for me, because i often found myself out of ammo and running in circels waiting for my chainsaw to recharge, while access to the pistol could have kept me fighting.

[@ponivi]

@@obsidianflight8065man what do you mean the reason its bad is because of bad aim, the damage is swful and they have no bonuses with other items

[@marmoran9493]

@@obsidianflight8065 i just used a mod that stopped the rat from stealing ammo boxes in order to know i can use the cool guns without them just running dry when i need them

[@DrVoodoo123]

Funny that he mentioned Elden Ring. I have the feeling that one of the reasons they are making the Nightreign game a rogue-like with a time limit is to force people into making decisions on the fly instead of going for highly optimized builds. I hope it works out for them.

[@Ghorda9]

it was just a fun idea that a debuting director had, nothing to do with what players where doing in the main game

[@pntn13]

@@Ghorda9 how do you know?

[@Ghorda9]

@@pntn13 there was an interview with lots of information, anyone that has done a deep dive into this has read through it on video.

[@edelmeister.]

Good point! Elden Ring does force you to make major decisions pretty early on (like weapon upgrades) which I feel discourages experimentation.

[@Ghorda9]

@@edelmeister. early weapon upgrades are fairly cheap considering how many low tier smithing stones you get and how easy the low tier bell bearings are to obtain

[@Jan12700]

1:20 Happy little spaghetti base 15:00 Fulgora is just there to embrace the Sushi and Gleba to spin around in circles.

[@frontrider3240]

Fulgora exists for bots. You only need to make electric engines, the rest of it is there from the scrap.

[@Jan12700]

@@frontrider3240 Bots are the lazy way. Sushi is the best.

[@Michaelonyoutub]

@@frontrider3240 Fulgora with belts is one of the funnest puzzles in the game, second only to belts in space, and maybe belts on gleba

[@blindsniper35]

​@@MichaelonyoutubI'm starting to see a pattern here

[@hagard2787]

Fulgora is for filtered splitters and inserters from recycles. trains that transport scrap and ultimatly bots that transport ingredients to produce science

[@grey5178]

I really struggled with this problem until I started optimizing for fun. It was an experience of self discovery as I found out I am slightly unhinged. I started skipping a lot of loot that I would have never used and wasting limited resources with wild abandon. In souls games I recommend using the weapon buff as the boss is transitioning between fazes, it gives you an amazing feeling as both sides are powering up and reduces the chances of getting instantly stomped before you get in the groove and loosing the limited resource for no return. And remember, a gross overkill is always fun.

[@nudemanonbike]

I've been doing this in games for a while now, too! It's way more engaging to play. My wife is horrified when I tell her about my second Baldurs Gate 3 run, where I decided I wasn't gonna bother picking up like, any loot that wasn't in my direct path, or go out of my way to do bonus fights. I was playing as the Durge and all I cared about was murderizing Orin, so I became an Orin-seeking Missile who ignored literally everything. I ended up curbstomping her at level 8 by rubbing together whatever random items I had in my inventory together, and frankly, it was SO MUCH MORE FUN than my previous playthrough where I was a fully kitted out sorcerer. Turns out thunderwave is the best spell in the game by a LOT, and you don't need anything else if everyone dies to fall damage! Taking this mindset into other games makes them feel a lot more fun, too, since by all accounts I'm below the power curve, but that means I actually DO need to use the elixers or whatever else. I'm basically intentionally creating situations where I "need" the strongest items the game is giving me, which feels significantly more fun!

[@mauriciopartnoy2789]

Back in the day when I was playing Morrowind I noticed that stat potions would stack and let you go over the 100 cap. I also noticed that having more intelligence would make the potions stronger. Lastly I noticed that if you sold back items to a vendor the max number that he would sell you of that item would go up, and it reseted every time you re-entered the shop. So I found a vendor that sold ingredients for potions. Bought some ingredients, sold them back a couple of time to then be able to buy in bulk. I made some INT potions, then made more effective INT potions using the stat boost, and then I made potions for all other stats. Some side effects: My speed potions were so potent that barely pressing forward would make the CPU process for a while before an entirely new area was loaded. The character was so fast it went straight through the game colliders. I had to make weaker potions of this kind. Strength also affected durability of weapons. So if I took a strength potion hitting anything would break my weapons. I also remember crafting a constant flight ring. oh! And some magic that dealt all types of damage in max radius. It was more or less a nuke. Then I stopped playing the game, I never saw the ending. I also broke Oblivion, but to a lesser extent.

[@GaleGrim]

"Dating back to the bush presidency" Why did you have to make that sound like it was so long ago... I was their man...

[@Roxor128]

Potentially problematic grammar mistake: "I was their man". Unless you want it to sound like you were working for Bush, you'd better change it to "there".

[@thepotatoportal69]

@@Roxor128 Maybe they were in a relationship with Bush

[@johngaughan9399]

And here I am, wondering "which one?" because I was around for both. Granted, I was only playing NES and the OG Wolfenstein during Sr's reign.

[@essneyallen6777]

​@@johngaughan9399 I really expected a "and I mean the first one" joke xD

[@NorroTaku]

It's really important for game devs to be cognizant and respectful of players irl time

[@DroCaMk3]

Excuse me, "wasting"? "100 hours"? I don't think you played the same factorio as me. I *utilized* around 5000 hours and I'm still nowhere near being finished with it.

[@Cracks094]

Talking about surpluses and deficits of health while having the beautiful Factorio OST running in the background immediately put my mind back to the Factory. Factorio is incredible.

[@LightOffArchives]

1:15 gleba jumpscare

[@Khaim.m]

Pls content warning

[@ivanbluecool]

Players will eventually master a game. Instead of punishing them like with level scalers that basically make any progress basically useless it should be rewarding showing they are learning your systems and make a replay experience more fun. Also do have some beta testing that finds the exploits and tune it before launch. Example Fire emblem awakening while I love can be broken with supports so fates giving it a tune up makes it way more fun to plan around the systems balance

[@somdudewillson]

Barring exceptionally niche/unpopular games, beta testers can never approach the 'testing' capacity of a playerbase.

[@SimonClarkstone]

Modding helps too, by letting modders create whole new challenges and play styles. (Factorio is good at that, I am told.)

[@kittydlyw]

I love the passive aggressive dates in the games list xD Thank you for actually listing the games btw! And awesome video :) I'm definitely going to reference this back later, it's quite insightful.

[@Lordblow1]

I was half expecting a reference to Lisa the Painful. In that game there are a ton of very rare items that are often very strong. Like molotovcocktails that deal more aoe damage then your whole team combined can do in 1 or 2 turns. All the items are still very rare and would fall into the same traps as other games but the designer found 2 solutions. 1. Firstly there is one teamate that is mostly useless but he can debuff and use items. This causes you to have 1 member in your party where to use them in a manner that is remotely optimal they are using an item every other turn. 2. There are a number of points in the game where you have to choose between losing all your items or an arm/teamate. Since items are very powerful and you will have learned to use them optimally by this point and not hoard them this makes the player manage their items even more thoughtfully. The first is probably something more games need. Item user is rather missing from the support, dps and tank triangle.

[@boobah5643]

That's not 'missing' from the holy trinity; the example you gave was a DPS that has an unusual resource. Plus, the holy trinity is actually damage, support, and control. The more commonly cited healing is a subset of support, of course, while tanking is a subset of control.

[@bradm.c.9569]

That perspective on Factorio sounds quite satisfactory.

[@3X3NTR1K]

There are other fixes as well! Ones that I've never seen used because I invented (?) them! Behold: - Resources that give permanent/long acting/multiplicative benefits when used. If every potion you down gives a +1 healing to every future potion, you'll be knocking most of them back as soon as you get them. Incentivizes usage over optimizing supply. - Prevention instead of curation. Splash that Holy Water on before fighting the zombies in order to save yourself time during actual combat. Using more at a time is possible, but with diminishing returns. It's one optimation working against another. - Resources that you don't decide to use at all, instead they are automatically used as needed. This promotes acting efficiently in combat so you don't end up tapped out or pouring money into replacing them. They can get consumed according to availability (99 potions? treated like water), danger (smashed to 1/100th HP? Panic elixer time), threat (the Big Lich pops up and everyone gets a drinking problem) and vulnerability (you could have protected your party, but now they're using all your items). Optimizing against resource drain. The more items your party needs, the less your money, score, reputation, and bragging rights. - Items attract trouble. Instead of limiting inventory space, the presence of items attract more enemies and more problems. Maybe potions smell good, the clinking of you glass alerts the guards, or consumable magic is just delicious to monsters. This reduces hording by forcing you to use them, and REWARDS hoarding by attracting more and/stronger enemies to grind down. - Excess items on hand gives less rewards. For reasons perhaps related to an easily annoyed god of fortune or hard to impress goddess of valor, the more numerous and valuable your current item chest is the less likely you are to find greater challenges, rare drops or great wealth. To the brave goes the spoils, as the misers get misery.

[@LimeyLassen]

He mentioned one in the video, obsolescence. For example if upgrade materials don't work on legendary items, there's no reason to not just blow them all on whatever you're using until you get a good drop.

[@3X3NTR1K]

@LimeyLassen That's a good one, if just a bit different than what I described. Upgrade materials are closer to a crafting system, which has overlap with resources but is really item drops with extra steps. Making them useless after a cutoff just relegates them to conditional vendor trash.

[@alecchristiaen4856]

For a tabletop example of how optimization ruins your fun. In d&d 5e, each player has the following available to them in their turn: -An action (most moves, including attacking, spellcasting, or anything that requires an ability check) -A bonus action (any action that is specified to be a bonus action, with some classes allowing to make certain actions as a bonus) -Movement, based on race/ancestry -a free item interaction (opening unlocked doors, drawing or stowing an item, etc) Now, so-called Martial classes (fighters, barbarians, paladins, etc.) get an ability called extra attack, allowing them to make more attacks per turn if they did an attack action. Here's the problem, however: this only applies if they attacked. Therefor, players will be gently persuaded by the rules to spend the whole turn just attacking every turn, with the only left creativity being which enemies to prioritize. You can't even swap between a melee and ranged weapon, because that would cost more than your item interaction and basically waste your turn. Now, in Pathfinder 2e, the action economy looks vastly different. Players get: -3 regular actions, to do most things, such as movement, attacking, casting spells, and such. -free actions (generally as an addition to a performed action, with only one free action applicable per action) Now, another detail, is that PF2E has a so-called multi-attack penalty. Your second attack each turn is made with a -5 penalty to the attack roll, and subsequent attacks are made with a -10. What this means is that you'll get diminishing returns on just whacking your enemies. As a result, a LOT of build suggestions online will mention a Martial's need for "third actions", a third thing they can do in combat other than move and attack. From demoralizing enemies with a death glare to recalling lore about the enemy, martials can get a major supporting role through this. There ARE ways to bring down the multi-attack penalty, especially for Rangers, who can bring it down to only -2 and -4, but even then, you're doing a specific build just so you can attack three times per turn. An entire aspect of understanding the rules boils down to understanding and working around the limits of the multi-attack penalty, and that's incredible design IMO. Humans behave like electricity sometimes, but we follow the path of most optimization. It's up to the designers to make this path enjoyable for us.

[@L4m3ness]

Huh.. I never realized that fundamental problem with multi attacks. That's kind of sad to hear. Thanks for bringing that aspect up, as something that could use a bit of homebrew fixing

[@brentramsten249]

i personally refer to the never use item instinct as the 'inil's or 'ill need it later' syndrome note: 'later' never comes

[@matfoxbidule7601]

I'm playing Factorio right as this dropped, nice

[@AdamGaffney96]

2:15 It's funny cause you show Hitman here, but that's actually the only game where I don't go for efficiency. In every game I do the same thing of "must do it perfect or not do it at all", which is usually the efficient strategy you mention. But in Hitman because of the "Silent Assassin" option, that overrides the efficiency because doing it perfect means doing Silent Assassin suit only. So I'll spend 40 minutes on a level I could've finished in 5, just to ensure it's perfect.

[@derrickobara6806]

Geez Adam, straight into a Gleba jumpscare....

[@tni333]

22:37 The great thing about Factorio is that you can combine both if your friends are as degenerate as you: Hang out with your friends AND spend 5 hours fiddling with inserters and splitters TOGETHER!

[@GretgorPooper]

What I do to avoid falling into optimization traps is doing challenge runs. Just for fun, I don't stream them or anything (not anymore at least). It worked well to keep me from basically cheesing all of Elden Ring and other Souls games.

[@insaincaldo]

Yeah. One thing I do is instead of upping difficulty and optimizing how to make it through. I make mini challenges. For example xcom, paring up soldiers (sort of like 2's bonding) who have to go on missions together. One can not be in play without the other, unless they die. Or Skyrim, by not using some of the crafting skills, maybe forgoing lock picking. Stuff like that.

[@mauni9324]

You know, i love how you edit your videos. I really enjoy the way you use specific videogame footage to correlate with what you are saying. And then i love it when you subvert it and throw an oddball on screen that refreshes my attention span.

[@SuperGameMaker]

Wow, fantastic thoughts - love it. I'm reminded of Koster's book "Theory of Fun", which at the risk of oversimplifying posits "gaming fun is about learning". I think that aligns with your message here - once you're done learning (what it is that needs to be done), the actual _doing_ is often drained of enjoyment. It was the time spend poking and prodding at the system, understanding its rules, putting the pieces together in that brain you so eloquently poop on (j/k :) and finding the One True Path that actually releases the dopamine - and why "hey there's a shorter path over here if you just get out your credit card" is not actually inconsistent with that. Love it - look forward to diving into your catalog, very interesting and high quality vid! Thank you for putting this out into the world!

[@Shantara11]

5:41 I spent half an hour trying to align this exact shot perfectly, and now I’m feeling judged by the video

[@code-garden-games]

Half Life Alyx controls the ammo spawns to keep you at a certain ammo level. Consequently, if you don't use much shotgun ammo you won't find much shotgun ammo. My first time playing I didn't know about this system and as I thought shotgun ammo was rare I barely used it. When I played again knowing about this system I used a lot more shotgun anmo and the game was a lot more fun. The same system was in Half Life 2 but it was never a problem because you have more ammo. I never felt like shotgun ammo was too scarce to use in Half Life 2 because you would usually have at least 20 ammo. In Half Life Alyx you usually have about 4.

[@samuxan]

I tried to fight that phenomenon in echoes of wisdom all the time. There's a handful of early echoes that can get you so almost everything with ease. The "cure" is curiosity. If the game makes you curious about how something might work you may try to use it's mechanics differently, once at least

[@jonasgajdosikas1125]

22:54 if your goal is to balance the lanes, it's probably easier to sideload the outputs of the first 2 belts, and if you use undergrounds you can do that in the space of 2 tiles, just enough to fit between the inserters.

[@LizardOfOz]

I started going after S and P ranks in Pizza Tower, which requires, amongst other things, to locate 4 secrets on each map. If not of the awareness of the issue discussed, I could easily just google the locations of those secrets, robbing myself of the gameplay process of finding them myself, and making earning those ranks less of an achievement.

[@JanB1605]

The problem in my experience is that some games reward experimentation, and some punish you for experimenting too early or doing the wrong thing. There are games where if you put your skill points into the "wrong" thing early or you buy the "wrong" thing with your limited resources, you make your life that much harder. Thus, you feel the need to look up the optimal strategy for how to proceed to protect yourself from getting frustrated because the game became too hard or you run into a soft lock where you kinda have to restart. And once that gets ingrained into you, you do it for all the games.

[@TwoEcksKay]

I love that you showed Runescape immediately followed by Melvor - for anyone who isn't familiar with either game, Runescape is well-known as a game where you skill-grind and Melvor is literally based on boiling Runescape down to nothing but the skill-grinding, perfectly mirroring what AoG is talking about at 17:37.

[@Atoll-ok1zm]

I absolutely love leech healing. Its a fantastic system to encourage agression by making it the only way to survive. Also fo4 power armor is...overrated to be kind. The ability to stack up absolutely ridiculous stealth multipliers, broken stealth mechanics, dumb enemy AI, and the generally poor performance of automatic weapons means snipers are the only optimal way to play. Same with skyrim's stealth archer.

[@Recon777x]

Amazing video, thanks. As a Factorio veteran, I appreciate this analysis. Feels spot on. About a year ago, I was playing No Man's Sky on recommendation by my youtube subscribers. If you ever want to find a game that is the most infuriating for someone who is hardwired for optimization, I think NMS is it. Playing NMS with a mind of optimizing it will very quickly lead to the realization that the entire game is broken and pointless. The only way to enjoy it is to completely disregard optimization or attaching any tangible value to any resource in the game. Also, it's hilarious when you mentioned getting your ship smashed by asteroids in Factorio because that happened to me just yesterday because I ran its schedule nonstop for too long and it slowly ran out of bullets.

[@vezokpiraka]

I guess this is why I love metroidvanias. The only optimization you can do is finding the stuff in an area as fast as the game allows, but it's not particularly bad if you miss a few. And checking guides to find 100% is basically required so you don't feel bad about optimizing the fun. The problem with optimizations in games is that I feel infinitely worse when I do something suboptimal, than when I achieve something optimal. (science says 10x, but it sure feels even worse). So playing games where you have to optimize all the time just becomes draining. On the other side I like pure grind fests like Diablo 3. There is stuff to optimize there, but the grind is so stilled in it's purest form that it is technically irrelevant how hard you optimize. You end up not even caring about the small upgrades you can get at the end cause you already smote every enemy millions of times. Also, while I appreciate stuff in the games (potions in the Witcher are a good example), I enjoy when I don't have to engage with these systems. I just want to hit every enemy with the same simple sword attack. That is extremely fun to me. Games that try to push you to use all mechanics just make go mad because I am forced to use something I don't like just to win at the game (E in Hades II comes to mind).

[@LimeyLassen]

Prince of Persia TLC has a feature where you can take screenshots and pin them to the map, this is so brilliant because it removes all the stress of forgetting where inaccessible loot and hidden paths are.

[@vezokpiraka]

@@LimeyLassen I never used that feature. Usually when I come back to an area if I have a map, I just check everything based on the map and see if I have the completion for that area. The pictures just kinda get in the way, cause I'm already scouring everything.

[@lessefrost]

Factorio is basically a game where the optimization process IS the fun. It's so deep and gives such a sandbox of ways to solve the problems it throws at you. I've been absolutely adoring Factorio Space Age. It feels like such a "well duh!" Expansion of Factorio's original core gameplay. They did a damn good job with the expansion feeling naturally a part of the game and not just hamstrung ideas. Everything feels more in line with the "more tools for the player to build their gameplay", both in the 2.0 and with the mod compatibility to the new stuff. Absolutely worth the price

[@hugmonger]

I heard the music for Satisfactory kick in and the happy chemicals kicked in as well. God I love that game

[@MrElgate]

I felt that exact thing in a particular game. Most stealth game involve hiding, which mean that the efficient solution is to not interact with most NPC as that could ruin our cover. I played an adult game where the goal was to be seen but not caught to progress. As a result, you end up being pushed toward the high risk and more fun situation rather than chosing the path of least resistance. I didn't start that game for its stealth mechanics, but I got hooked on it.

[@jamic6107]

7:25 "Chasing efficiency may lead to boredom." I must admit that I had a lot of fun spending hours to plan my schedule before starting FFXIII - Lightning Returns but it resulted in me doing all possible quests in less than three in-game days and I spent the next 10 days with almost nothing else to do.

[@cdavidcvalencia]

watching this right after seeing the "factorio is a wonderful game made for someone else" video adds a whole new perspective, especially since I never got through the blue science filter and now I'm overwhelmed seeing the lots of things you have to deal with in the expansion lol

[@4thstateofmatter662]

depending on when you played, blue science should be easier now- the fluid system has been reworked to be much simpler

[@ioangogov2993]

​@4thstateofmatter662 im a factorio adict But the rework has not made blue easier Just more optimal with a simple setup, new players still struggled

[@soccerandtrack10]

Whisky made me crash my ship, whisky made me fail a flip.

[@Kenionatus]

Amazing B roll and editing in this episode!

[@phancaophaiadrien1100]

One thing that helped me get over this ''to good to use/waste item" conundrum was old school roguelikes that showed you you inventory when you lose. Every single time i died, it showed me I had an item in my inventory that would have saved my butt if I hadn't ''saved it for later''

[@elcour]

Great use of music to have the factorio music play in the background while talking in generalities as an aural kind of foreshadowing

[@typemasters2871]

In modded Minecraft one thing I enjoy doing is seeing how quickly I can get a fortune 3 pickaxe whilst breaking as few ore blocks as possible Sometimes there are structures that can provide iron ingots Other times I can find a Pickaxe and anvil in generated structures that I can use Occasionally there are decent early game ore multipliers and a method to get ore without needing silk touch And then there is one or two mod packs that has x8 or higher ore processing but the amount of effort needed is so much that I know that it will not be fun, so I go for a less efficient but more enjoyable method

[@MrSpeakerCone]

I broadly agree with you, but I'd like to note that my favourite thing to do in any game is make my character as powerful as I can as early as I can. That's an enjoyable puzzle to solve for me, and steamrolling entire sections of the game is the reward for cleverly figuring out a cool optimal build or strategy.

[@zakkus]

Ive been playing the 4x game "Zephon" and it has a solution to the civ "ive already won but now ive got to make the game realize it (and its boring)" end game issue. When you reach end game, two unplayable faction spawn eldrich abominations and battle each other, and you choose to side with them or go it your own against both. It makes the whole game preceding it just the set up to the end game, and ive found myself very compelled to fully play through even losing matches

[@hjewkes]

Hitman Freelancer did this in a really cool way. The primary missions all incentivize going undetected and methodically disecting the puzzle of the level, but freelancer basically got rid of the rewards for that and the roguelike style of the missions leads you to a run and gun approach to just get through things. Then you get to hardcore mode and you have to balance the way youve learned to play freelancer with the much higher risk and the required prestige objective and the play style is all over the place

[@tylorhobbs8920]

Glad I could finally find the time to watch this thing. It's a great video, and is worth a watch, but I'm still regretting losing the time I could have spent on finding a more elegant solution to rock overproduction on Vulcanus, or figuring out how to properly optimize my Fulgoran scrap parade.

[@ai-spacedestructor]

its funny to see this over analysis of Factorio because if you read the Blog Posts on the website you quickly see that they just play arround with things until they feel the most fun without much deeper thought then that in to it. sure sometimes there is a greater plan like what the DLC should be about etc. but often mechanics are the way they are because it turned out to be the most fun way to interact with them.

[@bolicob]

I recently thought of Soren's quote in relation to PvP multiplayer game players' desire for all the edges to be sanded off their favorite game in the name of balance. For example: Overwatch, whose devs evolved the game almost exactly how the players wanted, resulting in a less than fun end product

[@N3M0N_M]

I absolutely loved this video, so interesting! I think this perspective is very intriguing and showed me a different way to look at games :))

[@ThePiiX]

i came here for sweet factorio silver and found excellent "Optimization is an optimization variable" gold.

[@GroundThing]

Something I've been thinking of, that I think fits here is the way I've been recently playing nuzlockes in pokemon. The classic way I'd been doing it is essentially standard hardcore nuzlocke rules, with docs and damage calcs on my phone, so I could always do the optimal thing in gym battles and other major fights, and while, for instance once edited down into a youtube video, that can be fun to watch to see the turbo-optimized strategies at play, often with further restrictions or in a difficulty rom-hack, I've recently been having a lot more fun treating it like a fire emblem game, where there's permadeath once you save, but I can test my strategy and refine it without locking in consequences, until I'm satisfied, and don't feel like I have to prematurely over-optimize.

[@JDothan]

12:24 I think the issue is also that most “encounters” are too easy, so the internal thought process is that “X item is rare, I know I don’t need it for this encounter, and there is a chance I will need them later” If encounters were difficult enough that you actually need to use the items, I think they’d get used more.

[@involuntaryascetic3602]

16:25 Metaphor actually doesn't punish you for sticking with your "best" archetypes at all, as any Archetype XP over the level cap will be converted into consumables that can be used to level any archetype in increments of 1000.

[@Syngraphaeor]

Gotta love how Adam starts with a nod to the good ol' issue of saving limited items in games... Otherwise known as COLLECTOR'S ANXIETY

[@5Davideo]

I'm only 3 minutes in and I'm all "Oh, I know that game! And that one! I haven't played that game, but I've heard of it!" As well as "Oh yeah, I totally relate to that, uh huh, mmhmm, yup!" But yeah particular shoutout to Runescape for "efficient but boring". Most of the ways to get XP are either slow and tedious, or fast but very expensive, which just pushes the problem over to gold farming, which itself is either slow and tedious, dependent on very small odds of very valuable drops, or there's only so many slots to do it once and they're always already taken by someone else. Of course you have a bot problem: 95% of the game loop is repetitive, assembly-plant-like tasks, of course people are going to try to automate it.

[@ThePiachu]

You know, while optimising might be ruining fun in a lot of games, there are some people that play games like Factorio where optimising IS the fun for them. Of course that's not an engagement for everyone, but supporting that on a smaller scale can be rewarding as well. Heck, I remember reading one of the Factorio devs wanting to make players not have blueprints that carried between games for that reason. It would force you to do the design loop all over again each time. But people wouldn't like that understandably, so that's not what we got in Factorio...

[@11clocky]

I like how the Shiren games handle the "saving this for later" problem with items. It introduces enemies who can oneshot you as early as the first dungeon floor. In other words, if you try to save your items for later, you'll die extremely fast, and the game teaches you this almost instantly. Use your items, don't engage with enemies head-on.

[@HiroTeaShi]

My parents have raised me to have a massive inferiority complex and I need to be constantly successful have any worth. Little did they know, games now have achievements :D

[@Thalassicus01]

1:10 Don't be too hard on yourself. Gleba turns anyone's best efforts into spaghetti!

[@MrAbgeBrandt]

Props for not taking sponsorships!!

[@KeithOlson]

One thing about Factorio you didn't dig into is that it *STRONGLY* encourages you to RE-optimize on a regular basis, replacing what worked well enough in the past with what works better as it becomes available. ...and accept using what is currently available while keeping in mind how you will need to change things in the future once you have gained what you need to improve them. What's more, by the time you need to-for example-rip out that huge coal-powered smelting line and replace it with fully-beaconed electrical smelters, you will have the tools to do so-both nuclear power to provide enough power AND the construction bots needed to make it a breeze instead of a grind. This both satisfies our drive to optimize *AND* fosters a mindset of acceptance of major positive change as a good thing, which we need in the real world. (Don't forget: play is practice for reality without its consequences, and productive play is exponentially so.)

[@kunkudunk1133]

Honestly, as someone that won’t do things I find boring, this whole video explains so much of why I get annoyed playing games with some people. They want to look every spot, line up everything in the factory perfectly, get every multiplier maximized in the correct order and I just get so bored or annoyed. Don’t get me wrong, I like learning and optimizing to an extent in most games, but I tend to just trial and error my way through it (well besides in pvp games) resulting in spaghetti bases in Factorio and “missed loot” in arpgs that just generate infinite random loot anyway. In a way it could be argued I’m still looking for efficiency, that being not wasting my time on boring aspects. In some regards, after playing enough games you can kinda just know when something is actually a good use of time. Still, I stopped hoarding consumables in arpgs once I saw a comment someone made joking about how everyone hoards them. While in a way it made more use them more optimally, I think I just realized that the “what ifs” were ruining some aspects of games for me. Similar thing with shooters that have limited ammo, I’ll use the fun guns till I’m nearly out even if I have an infinite one. Not saying this is the right way mind you, just now my experience playing arpgs with my father makes a lot more sense as he’d search every nook and cranny and get 5 gold for it.

[@theminerboy5694]

There's actually quite a lot of games (indie/old) that encourage you to use all your items, for example Project Zomboid encourages you to use your best weapon immediately because it allows you to level up your weapon skill in a safer way, which will benefit you in the long run even after the weapon breaks. Half-Life 2/ Black Mesa is structured in a way where every weapon has an optimal use case and you are given ammo that you have little of (most of the time) so you pretty much need to use the most powerful/ fun guns to progress.

[@ianmcallister1066]

So, what? I'm supposed to just USE my retirement grease???

[@awsome1010101]

RPGs have a delicate balance between grinding and not grinding. Some RPGs have a system where all enemies hover around your level, making grinding meaningless but, making the leveling system meaningless because an enemy at the start of the game is exactly as powerful as an enemy at the end of the game, or you pull a Control and actually make enemies harder to fight because their heath increases outpace your damage increases. Other RPGs have fixed levels throughout the game, making grinding the optimal way to play, or you recognize your time is valuable and try to push through the game without the grind and reach later stages under leveled and unprepared.

[@ChandloEnjoyer]

Tears of the Kingdom is much more fun to explore if you never build a hover-bike.

[@angeldude101]

In the overworld, I could probably agree. In the depths? I mainly had fun exploring it in pitch darkness, both with _and_ without the hoverbike. Without the hoverbike, it's about how to make sure you can get from point A to point B while knowing nothing about what obstacles are in the way. This especially applies to cliff faces where there's often gloom that I should avoid, but I can't see it until getting really close or I shoot a brightbloom near it, and even then I often don't know how tall the cliff is, so I have to carefully ration out my stamina as well as find ledges to stand on to recover. The hoverbike _does_ take much of that away, but in return you get a spectacular and beautiful bird's-eye-view of the few points of light that can be seen, and you can still get caught off guard by the sudden appearance of a cliff. In addition, the bike isn't actually the simplest to use and it can be very fun just learning how to safely land if you have a small battery and aren't using recall tricks to replenish, especially when you have no idea how high you are off the ground or if there's a pool of gloom directly below you. What really killed the fun of exploring the depths for me was lighting up the map.

Apropos looking up a guide and save scumming: The Swindle solves this really well. They use the perma-death, iron-man (=no reloading) and random generation of a roguelike to make the risk-reward mechanic of stealth shine.

[@gabrielvictor9015]

Great video bro, many thanks!

[@Sphendrana]

This is why challenge runs are so good for us. "Can I beat Morrowind without Magic?" as in no spells, scrolls, teleportation, or even potions? Technically, No. But if we ignorea few requisite items required for the main quest, YES. "Can I Beat Factorio if everything is a Fluid?" Pre-Space Age this is a nightmare. Who knows now lol

[@AssasinZorro]

Your idea of optimizing for fun is a very useful one I still replay Antichamber and Heat Signature almost yearly to remember them and try to do something new in them. Else Heart.Break() is another game where I find something new and outlandish to do every time I come back to optimize for my fun Also, your promo at the end is of interest again. BG3 was the thing that got my interest. Sometimes you promote KZbinrs I already watch but it is hard to have anything against that 😊

[@willamyte]

"Factorio" and "Broken Brain" usually go together rather well if you ask me

[@Stirdix]

I've found enjoyment in games where the goal is kind of "sufficient" levels of optimization, with a fairly strict level of diminishing returns. It makes it so that as long as I'm playing at that sufficient level, I then feel free to actually explore design space. [Granted, this doesn't fit the "pure optimization-based design" of Factorio, but works well with the "function plus aesthetics" design of a lot of building games.] ------ E.g.: contrast Factorio and Satisfactory. In Factorio, every single tile is a part of a fine-tuned machine, so you really can only build things so many ways. By contrast, in Satisfactory, so long as the right things are connected to the right things, the exact placement doesn't matter much, so you're comparatively free to build in aesthetics and lay things out logically instead of how the conveyor belts will fit. Or, take the latest Stardew update compared to earlier ones: in the past, really the only late game money-maker was ancientfruit or starfruit wine (or skull caverns runs with the blacksmith profession depending on what you're optimizing for), but now with fish smokers and mushroom logs and legendary fish ponds and so forth all being at least relatively competitive, you have the freedom to have more variety on your farm without feeling like you're sacrificing (much) money to do so. Or actually, the thing that sent me down that path: asking "why do I like Dragon Quest Builders so much when I find Minecraft so meh." Because building a material farm in Minecraft usually requires building things essentially one specific way and maybe designing some aesthetics around that, whereas DQB has "so long as you toss the right things in a room [a space walled off with a door], the NPCs will use it to build stuff just the same" - so you can make a bunch of builds with different aesthetics which are virtually equivalent in function. ------ It goes beyond these builder-games though: e.g., Terraria [setting aside its actual building mechanics] goes back and forth when it comes to weapons (aside from mage, where weapons do wildly different things and so you get some more freedom). [+] Very early-game you're basically just looking for the optimal weapon right now (e.g., I played for a while with an umbrella because I found one with a godly modifier from an early chest, so it was my highest DPS). [-] But by the time you get to WoF, you're probably playing with a nearly-optimal setup... [+] Until you enter hardmode, when all of a sudden there are all kinds of options (ores from altars? Farming enemies? Events? Fishing weapons?). [-] Things narrow post-mech,... [+] Then open up again post-Plantera and especially post-Golem. [-] But then after the pillars and even post-ML, you're pretty much down to a handful of optimal choices again. Obviously you see this in competitive multiplayer where you want an active meta, too. I could probably come up with more examples but this comment is already too long.

[@BarkofthePhoenix]

On this topic, you should talk about how (oldschool) RuneScape handles this! Since grinding for stuff is literally the point of the game, being efficient and optimal is exactly how you are meant to play the game. And no matter how efficient you decide to be, all of it is intended! It completely sidesteps the issues of all other major mmos where you are usually rushing to get into the good bits asap. In osrs the grinding, IS the good bit, and it has been refined to be immensely satisfying.

[@QuilloManar]

I feel happy, yet sad witnessing the last video by the Architect. Now that the rest of his life will be consumed by Cracktorio. _The factory must grow._

[@samb1532]

Short refill timers or decaying mechanics are great for getting players to use their tools more. Ultrakill's BFG equivalent is much less powerful but comes off cooldown so frequently that I'm not holding it for long when it's available.

[@dannymac6368]

Think about the number of Masterballs that vanished after an overwrite.

[@TyphoonJig]

A game that I really liked in that regard was Opus Magnum. With it tracking 3 metrics of your contraption, their corst, their speed and the space they take, optimizing each level comes in a lot of ways and once you've succeded at doing the most straightforward (optimizing cost) you can try to make a smaller or faster machine for a renewed challenge.

[@thekoifishcoyote8762]

Turns out I've been confusing satisfactory with factorio

[@Jan12700]

Factorio was first and is 2D. Satisfactory only is from 2019 and is 3D

[@missingno9]

Satisfactory was inspired by Factorio, so confusing them with each other is not a bad thing

[@Road_to_Dawn]

Satisfactorio?

[@CasualKraken]

Funny because I prefer first person satisfactory but I yearn for the hover pack so I can build top down

[@missingno9]

@@CasualKraken me too, as well as the lack of base defense

[@tjlambaes]

I love this. As an advocate of people not using bp copy’s from the internet to build your factory I agree. I have almost 3000 hours in Factorio not from afk but from starting at the screen and trying to figure out my factory design.

[@twitchy.mp3]

Half way through wondering why i even started watching this till you brought the attention back to factorio

[@MasterOfBaiter]

The save it for later mentality is such a pain but one that can be solved through 2 things, one is difficulty: if you make a game hard enough in the right way you insentivize utilizing every tool in your arsenal. The second is framing. I had this issue far less with games like the witcher where utilizing tools to exploit weaknesses and the like proved to be a necessary concept to even stand a chance. You have to use all tools to deal with specific enemies, in my opinion a resource management mechanic could be added rather than the simplistic alcohol replenishment system and the game would still work

[@Landmine752]

Wait, I recognize the font in the thumbnail! I feel like I won some kind of lottery seeing my work in the wild.

[@QwixLF]

I bought it for Switch late November last year and it became my second most played game that year. I have 3 distinct files where I challenged myself to learn new tools I was too hesitant to in the last, and just recently just went back to my first file (starting around the 180hr mark) to see how I thought a year ago when I was just starting out, juuuuust a peak. And that's an additional +140 hours remodling the whole damn thing.

[@Kligor2]

I doubt it'll come up some gonna comment preemptively but I LOVE how Witcher 3 handled the oils. They REALLY want you to use them so to circumvent that hoarding instinct they made them renew every rest (if you have alcohol which you always will) which made me willing to apply an oil for any fight that seemed to need it rather than saving it for "just the right time"

[@lbers238]

For me Space Age did the opposite. It pushed back when I can finalize my builds and scale up. So now I'm just constantly overwhelmed because it takes forever before I can finally build.

[@Raganui]

The Factory must grow. All hail the Omnissiah!